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Dayton Ward Previews The Fall: Peaceable Kingdoms

Tomorrow will be the big day. Sure, it’s New Year’s Eve, but it’s also the day that Simon & Schuster/Pocket Books will release the fifth and final entry in its popular Star Trek crossover series, The Fall. Book five is Peaceable Kingdoms, penned by Dayton Ward. StarTrek.com invited Ward to -- in his own words – preview Peaceable Kingdoms and sum up the challenges of finishing what David R. George III, Una McCormack, David Mack and James Swallow established with their respective novels, Revelation and Dust, The Crimson Shadow, A Ceremony of Losses and The Poisoned Chalice. Ward was kind enough to take us up on our offer, and here’s what he had to say:

The Fall is a pretty ambitious undertaking, with five novels attempting to tell their own stories while at the same time contributing to a narrative that definitely shakes up the “status quo” enjoyed by the current line of Star Trek novels set in the 24th century. The mini-series features characters from Star Trek: The Next Generationand Deep Space Nine, along with the novel spin-off series Star Trek: Titan and a ship and crew created for the novels, the U.S.S. Aventine.

The first book, David R. George III’s Revelation and Dust, sets into motion various events and plot threads that carry forward into each of the mini-series’ other four novels. With Peaceable Kingdoms, I had the formidable challenge of following up on everything wrought by my partners in writerly mischief—Mr. George, Una McCormack, David Mack, and James Swallow—while still trying to tell a story of my own.

My book features Captain Picard and the U.S.S. Enterprise-E, dispatched on what amounts to a last-ditch effort to expose the truth behind the assassination of Federation President Nanietta Bacco and the increasingly hawkish approach to the interstellar political landscape championed by her successor, interim President Ishan Anjar. While there is no hard evidence implicating anyone in Bacco’s murder, suspicions about Anjar and those who elevated him to power continue to grow. When new information about the temporary president comes to light, Picard and his crew set out to find the truth, once and for all.

Everything’s been building to this, I suppose, and after the superb work performed by my fellow wordsmiths, it’s up to me to stick the landing. It was tremendous fun working with the other authors on this project, all the more so because I consider each of them friends. I’d like to think I did their efforts justice, but that’s for readers to decide. As for what might be next for the crews of the Enterprise, Deep Space Nine, Titan and Aventine? Let’s just say that plans definitely are afoot!